BLACKBERRY WINTER

For me, being brought up to become a woman who could live responsibly in the contemporary world and learning to become an anthropologist, conscious of the culture in which I lived, were almost the same thing." Here — as child, wife, mother and grandmother, as scholar and writer, and as an individual within a certain time and culture — Margaret Mead scrutinizes herself meticulously and vigorously. She also examines her early life and personal familial determinants with a critical affection. Her professor-father taught her "the importance of thinking clearly and keeping one's premises clear," while her mother "felt it important to continue her intellectual life and to be a responsible citizen in a world in which there were so many wrongs." So Margaret Mead assesses her family — siblings and their inter-relationships, her respected grandmother — and the things they did that other people did not. She further explores the meaning and significance of "difference" as it affects and interacts with personality, negatively and positively — from a minor humiliation at De Pauw University through new illuminations in her studies, her growth as a scholar and person, her three marriages and work in Samoa, Bali, and New Guinea. The prime target of her field and academic experiences was to "find out more about human beings." So it is with Miss Mead's witty, occasionally severe, and always relevant personal excursion into autobiography. Miss Mead is not one to be caught in a category and these reflections on a long productive life have the flavor of youthful beginnings.